Map Updates – new Installer, Overviewmap, and much more

Well first of all, sorry for not informing about changes over the last month. I simply always wanted to wait for some more steps, before writing about them - and so this post will get quite long.

Most noticeable is that the maps now come with a simple overview map - so when zooming out in Mapsource, Basecamp or Qlankdarte GT, the map doesn't go blank at some point anymore, but shows cities and country borders, no matter how far you zoom out. This also heavily speeds up showing of the map when zoomed out far. It's not perfect yet, because the overview map has only one level, but I hope in future mkgmap offers more possibilities here.

Second big improvement - is that I completly reworked the Windows installer for the Europe map, and all maps which have contourlines as an external download. Now the installer asks for providing any other (optional) files and will unpack them into the right place. I also hope, that this relieves me from answering questions why sending maps to the GPS fails, or why the map is blank - both of which cost me quite a lot of time. Unfortunately yester (Monday) the mtbeurope.exe was broken till 14:00 CET - and the mtbeurope.7z just didn't make it for the download server sync, so please download it again today, if you downloaded it yesterday.

If you cancel installing the contourlines - or the map data the installer will try to never break something, but installation should be easy and straightforward. In case the contourlines exist already - the installer will not need to unpack them again. Should I ever update the contourlines the installer will make sure to remind you about it, however for everyone still using contourlines pre October 2012 (contourlines v1) this won't work - so please download newer contourlines.

With the housenumber address search, a new bug appeared, so I had to change some line types - for everyone using an adapted typ-file - please make sure to notice the new types: 0x1060d, 0x1060f, 0x1061b, 0x1061c, 0x1061d for both Openmtbmap and Velomap. Plus 0x10019 and 0x1001a only for Velomap. This should fix some very seldom case that the routing coudln't route to some addresses.

So I hope the maps give you lots of fun, spring is coming and everywhere I look I see cyclists and mountainbikers. Whising everyone a good start into the biking season.

Other significant Changes over the last 6 weeks:

Nonconnected single pieces of roads are not routable anymore, they could break routing sometimes.

removed fenced=yes.

place=town, place=village and place=suburb on areas or relations is now rendered as urban area (lighter color than residential area, but still distiguishable from the background)

some improvements on the easy layout (unclassifieds / primaries

make trunk roads routable, if bicycle=no is not given. Make motorways routable if bicycle=yes is given...